Treasure

Winter in the UK and once again grey clouds bring the threat of rain. It's the time of year to cozy up on the couch and begin a period of semi-hibernation. The only relief from the dull chill? A night out or the promise of Christmas celebrations. The shops are full of plastic tat, fairy lights, chocolate treats, stuffed depictions of Rudolf, all made in some far-off factory. They offer a fleeting moment of joy. Three months ago these offerings appeared. Now the countdown begins "25 days until..." and the festive tunes intensify. They scream "buy, buy, BUY!".

This year something is different. It's been almost a year since the people of England whooped and cheered for 2020. For the young, it had been one of the most anticipated years in memory. When the clocks struck 12 that night they cheered, they hugged their friends, hopeful for the future. There would be no such celebrations this year.

Now the people line up, waiting their turn to buy the newspapers that could provide some answers. Could they hug their friends? Will they see their families? Can they work?

Many were allowed to sit back and think of life's important things. They wanted connection, video-called their friends and family, looked out for each other and made idealized plans for the far-off future. The people wanted to experience the world, wanted to acquire knowledge, skills, and hobbies.

Cathy, a "key worker" was fed up with the work-home grind. She needed something different. Something that could take her away from people and allow her to forget the chaos in which she existed.

She had found solace in the form of a muddy field and a metal detector. She hummed Fairytale of New York, whilst sweeping her metal detector from side to side.

The metal detector let out a bleep "Looks like you've found something. Might be gold!" her partner Shawn joked. She began to dig.

"Nope, just another bottle cap... oh well I guess we should add it to the collection". Cathy picked up her pinpointer to give it one last sweep before covering back up the hole. "I'm getting another signal here...".

Digging the side of the hole, she uncovered a small coin-shaped piece of metal. "I found a coin, yes! I think... I think this is gold!". "What, no you are joking right?". "No... look it's a stater coin! It's a Celtic stater!".

Shawn peered into the shaking hand of his partner and indeed there lay a gold coin with Celtic horse detailing. It was chipped and warped from age. "How much are they worth?". "I think... anything from a few hundred to a few thousand pounds... I wonder if there's more."

Together they searched the area and discovered signal after signal, coin after coin. They had found a hoard, they had found treasure.

After filling in the holes, they sat on the ground in silence, their faces beaming.

Shivering Cathy buried herself in her hoodie, pulling the hood over her head. They leaned into each other, boots and cargo pants caked in mud. The coins were safely stashed away in their rucksacks, GPS coordinates noted in their phones.

An understanding fell between them. It was going to be okay.

Cold nights become warm days as snowdrops then daffodils, bluebells, and primroses begin to surface. The clouds begin to part for a brief spell, leaving behind brilliant electric skies. Familiar sounds pierce the land as the bird's welcome spring.

A kettle whistles. Cathy jumps up from adjusting her laptop screen. "Ah sh...ite!" the laptop had jumped with her. She turned off the hob when the video call she'd been expecting called for her attention. She rushed back to answer.

"Hello, I was just making tea, I'd make you one but you're in America" she held the kettle to the camera. The woman held up her coffee "It's alright take your time".

Cathy settled on her sofa, tea made in a blue and white old willow patterned cup, resting in her hands over her green woolly jumper. Her hair, tied in a messy bun. The caller sat behind a desk, hair straight wearing a patterned blouse. Cathy secretly guessed that they were both wearing joggers.

"Hi, I'm Roxanne I am writing articles on positive Covid-19 stories from around the World. I found your story interesting and I have some questions that I would like to ask you".

Cathy answered many of the questions she has answered time and time again. What is the treasure progress? How do you metal detect? How do you get permission to detect? How much was the horde worth? Most see metal detecting as an odd hobby until you actually find something, and then they want a fast track map to success over what you found by chance. As the interview progressed, they became more familiar and relaxed with each other.

"Well... in dollars after splitting the money with the landowner, our share came to about $20,000... it's a bit less in pounds, but it was still over a year's worth of work for me". "You must have been ecstatic!". "We were. We might have quit our jobs a little early but... we needed that time".

"Are you planning on looking for any more treasure?". "I have looked but soon put it down to beginners luck... it was a once in a lifetime type of find... we decided we had to... I guess make our own treasure" she grinned. "Make your own treasure?" "Yes! Treasure is just things left behind over the centuries that people have made from living their lives. I look at what's left in the ground from recent generations, and in a way, it's upsetting".

"Yeah, it's upsetting to see the effects we are currently having on our environment and we could easily be known as the plastic generation, do you find much plastic?". "Well, what I find is mostly things like bottle caps because I'm using a metal detector but when I'm digging, yes... I do find many pieces of plastic in the ground". "What do you do with them?" "I take them home, of course! The bottle caps I make necklaces out of like this one... and the other rubbish I throw away or recycle".

"Are those your treasure?" Roxane gestured to the bottle cap necklace. "No, I just like making stuff... but imagine if generations from now there's a museum and it's full of bottle caps, and that's, that's what people remember us for". "Like an exhibit of our favorite sodas". "Exactly, much of the stuff we leave in the ground doesn’t have any meaning or purpose it's just rubbish".

Cathy reached over and grabbed an item from her side-table. "Making a historic discovery makes you really think about what you will leave behind for future generations and I think part of the solution to this sadness I feel when I think about the toxic waste we leave behind is to actually make something that someone will treasure".

She presented the object she had grabbed. It was a little black book with a hand-tooled leather cover. "Wow, did you make that?". "Yes, I feel that we rely too much on digital formats for our writing, but I think if it's worth writing, it's worth making a physical copy. If anything happened to our technology we'd lose so much of our culture, our music, and our knowledge. Imagine if one day we lose all of that, and all people had to piece together in order to figure out just who we were was our rubbish".

"Yeah, it would be confusing to try to figure out who we were and why we did what we did without actually knowing us". "Exactly, why did we create so much toxic stuff? Why did we bury tons of nuclear waste? Who were these mad people? Yet... supposing this book somehow defied the odds and was found preserved, sealed in a box somehow. Imagine it contained just the normal scribblings of an everyday person... they could learn so much from that, and in a way, this little book could be someone else's buried treasure". "I love that idea!" Roxanne exclaimed. "Yeah, I'm thinking of selling them. This one is more of a prototype... I might keep it".

And so it was that Roxanne wrote her article, Cathy sold her books. Life continued as life has since life began. Much of life's story gets forgotten, few will ever tell theirs. Those who have gone before us have left their marks on Earth, some by chance others by design. In each ancient monument and artifact is a mystery, a story waiting to be told. Not all get to tell their story, some tell great stories passed down and changed by the generations. Some leave behind what is perhaps the greatest and most mysterious treasure of all; life.